A utility monitoring system may include utility monitoring devices capable of communicating data to a central computer system that receives the data for storage, analyses or reporting. The central computer system must learn the identity of all of the utility monitoring devices so that it can approve receipt of their monitored data and to know where to go within a known device to find specific data. For example, the A-phase rms voltage may be located in one register in one device and an entirely different register in another device. Knowing the device identity allows the central computer system to also know the device's register layout configuration from a known library of register lists and thereby access the data stored in the device's registers quickly and accurately.
Minimizing the time required to discover the device identities is very important because the communications network connecting all the utility monitoring devices needs bandwidth to carry out other important tasks related to the utility monitoring system and other ancillary systems. However, due to the nature of certain utility monitoring systems, a number of factors can cause the auto-discovery process to be extremely slow. First, some utility monitoring systems use a simple serial communications protocol to communicate device data to the central computer system. Although the serial communications protocol may eventually communicate data over a faster one, such as Ethernet, response times are limited by the most restrictive communications pipe in the utility monitoring system. Moreover, the larger the utility monitoring system (e.g., over 1000 nodes or devices and over 200 unique IP addresses), network congestion becomes a more significant problem. If it takes 24 hours or even longer to auto-learn the identities of devices present in the utility monitoring system, such a delay may be considered unacceptable and potentially unsafe. As devices are added or removed, the central computer system must quickly be able to learn new device identities and discard old ones, otherwise efficiency is lost.
Thus, a need exists for an improved apparatus and method to quickly ascertain the devices located on a utility monitoring system. The present invention is directed to satisfying one or more of these needs and solving other problems.